My first contact with the Internet, or rather the version of the Internet that was available to the public, occurred in 1995. That is, eighteen years ago as if this writing. I am not going to do stupid things and go on about how it has changed or how I prefer the Internet as it was, or that kind of shit. Things change for a reason, regardless of whether they change for good or ill. And trying to stop change is like trying to stop death. Continue Reading

A couple of posts ago, I wrote something with the title “Lance Henriksen has done more to represent the autistic than Suzanne Wright ever will”. This resulted in some confusion in conversations I had elsewhere concerning what I write here. Continue Reading

Well, I just got my hands on a trial version of MarsEdit for my MacBook, to see whether it is worth investing the forty dollars to procure a licensed version. I already have been trying out a later version on my new desktop computer, but my MacBook is still stuck on version 10.5.whatever of OS X, so a previous version (2.4.4) of MarsEdit was needed to use it on my MacBook. Now that I have that out of the way, I am going to return to the previous track of my thoughts. Specifically, that all forms of our media, electronic and otherwise, need changes in both organisation and law if they are to benefit us all in the coming future. Continue Reading

It was a few days ago, but after linking to this article on TNL.net, and now this one, I got to thinking a wee bit. During my lifetime, we have seen a massive deregulation spree, the birth of the home computer market, and the acceleration of communications technology to the point where it is now cheaper to “speak” to someone across the world than it can sometimes be to speak to someone across town. But as with all advances in technology such as home viewing, the prospect of improving the Human condition or situation in future is being threatened. Not by an enemy with ill intent, but rather by an element of stupidity, thoughtlessness, or carelessness within our own ranks. Continue Reading

Ever since we began to build houses out of mud and stone, we Homo Sapiens have been concerned with questions about property. Property comes in many forms. Physical objects, animals, ideas, and even people can be property, although the last of those four is something nobody really wants to talk about or acknowledge in modern times. But what is important here is the manner in which property is exchanged. There are a few ways in which property is exchanged, and in order to understand the issue at hand, we need to go through them to some degree. Continue Reading

Now that I have completed some experiments in integrating graphics with entries and looked at the results, I feel it is time to go back into a more serious mode in terms of subject matter. For this entry, I will talk about the problem called path dependency. Path dependency is, bluntly put, a threat to one of the things that we as a species desire most. We desire to progress in a forward direction, to leave the worst remnants of our past behind, and to have better than previous generations did.

The first question I am sure you will ask is, “what is path dependency?”. The best way to answer is through analogy. Imagine for a moment that you are a lion, wolf, or similar large animal of prey that depends upon a fast run and a powerful bite in order to win meals. You are chasing game that is a tiny bit slower in the long haul, and of a size that will keep you eating enough to make the expenditure of energy worth it in the end. But out of the corner of your eye, you see game that is far easier over the long term to bring down, and will yield a much bigger feast for yourself once the hunt concludes. So what do you do?